Henry Cavill teases Mass Effect as his "secret project"
Could Henry Cavill be the live-action Commander Shepherd?
Henry Cavill seems to have some sort of "secret project" that ties him to the universe of BioWare's Mass Effect video games, an Instagram post from the actor appears to have confirmed.
Of course, Henry Cavill is no stranger to familiar franchises: he's already played the role of DC's Superman and popped up in tentpole movies like Mission Impossible: Fallout and The Man from UNCLE. He's also a well-known gamer, with his love of CD Projekt Red's The Witcher 3 game inspiring Cavill to lobby for the role of Geralt in Netflix's The Witcher series (which, like the game, was based on the books by Andrzej Sapkowski).
And now, Cavill seems to be getting involved with the Mass Effect franchise. Or at least, that's what his latest cryptic Instagram post appears to imply.
As you can see below, Cavill posted an image from his hair and make-up chair on the set of The Witcher season 2, in which he is clutching a few pieces of paper. The caption reads, "Secret project? Or just a handful of paper with random words on it.... Guess you'll have to wait and see." But it's those blurry words on the front page of Cavill's ream which have captured the internet's attention...
https://www.instagram.com/p/CLrAjEuhtTe/
To the naked eye, those words might look blurry and impossible to read. But where there's a will there's a way, and the outlet Gamepressure found a way to make those words legible using a tool called Focus Magic. They worked out that Cavill seems to be reading a printout of the Mass Effect 3 Wikipedia page.
The part he's reading is a spoiler-filled plot summary from the third game in the franchise, which reads, "Following the events on Tuchanka and a failed coup by Cerberus to take over the Citadel, the quarians offer their support to the Alliance if Shepard helps them reclaim their homeworld, Rannoch, from the geth. Assisted by a quarian, either Tali'Zorah or Admiral Daro'Xen, Shepard boards a geth dreadnought and rescues a captive geth unit, either Legion or a facsimile occupied by a geth virtual intelligence (VI), then disables the Reaper control signal over the geth.
"Shepard then locates and destroys a Reaper base on Rannoch, which gives the quarians an opportunity to attack the vulnerable geth. However, the allied geth unit reveals that it intends to sacrifice itself in order to upgrade the geth using Reaper technology, which will enable the geth to achieve true sentience and free will, making them capable of defeating the quarians. Either Shepard negotiates a ceasefire to gain support from both sides, or is forced to support one side, which results in the other being completely annihilated."
Even though we now know what he was reading, the central mystery remains: why exactly is Henry Cavill scrubbing up on his Mass Effect knowledge? Although it's impossible to know which one is true, there are several possibilities we can think of: perhaps Henry Cavill has a voice-acting role in Mass Effect Legendary Edition, an upcoming remaster of the first three games in BioWare's franchise; or maybe he's set to appear in Mass Effect 4, the next full release in the gaming series; or could Henry Cavill be preparing to appear in a movie or TV show based on Mass Effect?
Rumours are already flitting around the web, with an outlet called Small Screen making a rather massive claim: the site says that an unnamed source has told them that Henry Cavill will star in a Mass Effect film in the role of Commander Shepherd, the hero of the first three Mass Effect games.
Only time will tell if that claim is true. Of course, there's always the possibility that Cavill was just trying to wind us up with that Instagram post!
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Authors
Rob Leane is the Gaming Editor at Radio Times, overseeing our coverage of the biggest games on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC, mobile and VR. Rob works across our website, social media accounts and video channels, as well as producing our weekly gaming newsletter. He has previously worked at Den of Geek, Stealth Optional and Dennis Publishing.
